1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a device for the transport and the intermediate storage of already, almost or completely cooked food or ready set-dish meals. The catering for a large number of persons, be it in hotel and restaurant businesses, in homes of all types, but also in military and company canteens, in railway carriages and also ships is becoming more and more demanding. The consumers specifically desire more and more natural, gently cooked and low-fat meals which furthermore are to be as fresh as possible, and are to be served best of all only on porcelain plates and with high quality cutlery. Unit meals served of cheap, disposable plastic plates with disposable plastic cutlery do not satisfy these demands. Kitchen businesses which constantly prepare a large number of high quality set-dish plates or à la carte meals may now indeed fulfil these requirements, but the task is very demanding with regard to logistics and it is quite difficult for everything to be ready at the correct time, and finally to be able to serve the meals to the guest as fresh and as hot as possible. The more food portions need to be rapidly distributed, the more difficult is becomes to complete the preparation of the food at the right moment in time and to serve it to all those being served who wish to eat hot and freshly cooked meals. It is indeed the case that if large banquets are to be held, or are large number of people in a restricted space are to be catered for, one reaches limits with conventional cooking and heat retaining methods. Either the freshness of the food portions suffers, or the naturalness of the meals, or their packaging does not conform to the desired quality requirements. Thus for example the food portions for catering in aircraft are prepared and (deep) frozen in the form of set-dish meals on plastic containers with a see-through lid or removable aluminium foils. Due to the large energy requirement, the food portions are heated even before the start of the aircraft to 150° C. and then shortly before being served the meals are heated for a short time in the on-board hot-air oven to 250° C. for a short time during the flight. The steam is produced in the aircraft with the help of water contained in the meals, which has the effect that these meals are often excessively dried out. This technology and its technical limits also limit the selection of meals. On long haul flights the food portions are not only brought along for the departure flight but also for the return flight, wherein a safety reserve of various set-dish meals is always brought along since the number and composition of the passengers on the return flight is not known before the departure flight. All meals however which are not consumed on the return flight end up as pigs swill. As a rule is not possible to use them again for human consumption due to their lack of freshness.
According to the so-called cook-and-chill method, firstly large quantities of the same meals are cooked in a production kitchen for large quantities of food portions. The food is subsequently portioned in catering standardised dishes and is cooled down from 170° C. to +3° C. within 90 minutes in a shock refrigerator. This is to reduce the formation of bacteria. The meals prepared in this manner, cooled to 1° C. to 4° C., may be kept for five days. Prepared in the correct manner they may be compared to freshly prepared food.
2. Description of the Prior Art
According to the so-called cuission-sous-vide method, the prepared raw products are evacuated in special cooking bags and are cooked in these. All aroma substances are retained by way of this method. No foreign matter may penetrate these. Here too the meals are cooled in a shock-like manner. They may be used without concern for up to 21 days without preservatives.
The above mentioned methods however are not completely convincing with regard to many aspects. With the cook-and-chill method one operates only with the shock cooling which only permits a limited, safe storage capability of approx. 3 days. In practise however a significantly longer storage capability is very desirable. With the cuission-sous-vide method on the other hand although a longer storage capability is ensured, the expense of packaging the individual meals in each case in airtight bags and of evacuating them individually however is very great. The removal from the packaging and preparation required for use on the other hand is very large and a lot of waste material occurs.
A device is known from WO99/04676 which consists of a plate of porcelain as well as a cover which lies on the edge of the plate in a sealing manner, for example in the form of a bell of deep-drawn, transparent plastic. The bell comprises a one-way valve through which the air content of the joined-together parts may be evacuated. The associated serving tray comprises preformed recesses for accommodating at least one plate in a manner secure from slippage. The plates further comprise loose insert containers which are likewise manufactured of porcelain and may be applied into the plate in an exactly fitting complementary manner in various ways so that the surface of the plate is divided into several container regions which are subdivided from one another and the individual insert containers are held on the plate in a manner such that the are secure from slipping. With such a device, a ready prepared set-dish meal cooled to approx 2° C. to 4° C. may be stored up to 14 days, and when required may be heated and served within a few minutes. Since however a cover having a large stability is required for each individual plate, one requires a corresponding amount of space. With the transparent plastic suggested in WO 99/04676, the transparency to light also has an unfavourable effect of the durability of the set-dish meals. Finally the covers may not withstand an unlimited amount of evacuation and in time suffer from breakage so that they lose their sealedness.
It would generally be desirable to be able to freshly serve set-dish meals, for example in hospitals, homes or large hotels so that the consumer also feels that he is being served as if he were to take his meal in a small gourmet restaurant. A system is demanded in order to be able to render the meals as durable as possible with an as large as possible quality with little effort. The meals should be able to be transported and stored without much additional hand manipulation and finally should be able to be prepared and served for direct consumption as rapidly and as simply as possible.